


a promise doesn't mean a thing

by endquestionmark



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 17:17:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4754636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endquestionmark/pseuds/endquestionmark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Napoleon is not in the car.</p><p>It’s a simplistic way of looking at things — Illya has seen Napoleon while he has been many people, not least of all himself, or the himself that passes for everyday use — but in the car, there is somebody with a little of Napoleon’s smile, and hiding half of his confidence under all of his arrogance, and with absolutely none of the certainty that Napoleon wears from every angle. Illya, a little of the way up the hill on the other side of the road, thinks that he has never seen Napoleon unaware that somebody is watching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a promise doesn't mean a thing

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: this is honeytrap fic in which the target is predatory, of which Napoleon is fully aware prior to the mission. As such: identity kink, consent play, moderate virginity kink, and the usual choking, exhibitionism, and physical domination open buffet. Once again I can't actually blame anybody for this except myself, which is frankly worrying in this case. Title with heartfelt apologies to Laura Mvula.

Napoleon is not in the car.

It’s a simplistic way of looking at things — Illya has seen Napoleon while he has been many people, not least of all himself, or the himself that passes for everyday use — but in the car, there is somebody with a little of Napoleon’s smile, and hiding half of his confidence under all of his arrogance, and with absolutely none of the certainty that Napoleon wears from every angle. Illya, a little of the way up the hill on the other side of the road, thinks that he has never seen Napoleon unaware that somebody is watching. Of course, that isn’t the case now either. Napoleon knows that Illya is there, for the moment, and that in ten minutes, when the wine has been poured, Illya will give up the advantage of higher ground and find himself a shadow to become in the trees to the east of the house. Napoleon gets out of the car as if he doesn’t know, though, that he turns heads when he walks down the street, and so while it is not Napoleon in the car, but someone who shades his eyes, and looks uphill into the last of the sunset behind the chapel at the top of the hill, and feigns surprise when the man that he’s there to see calls a name that is, for that brief moment, not his.

There are handshakes; there are niceties. These do not concern Illya, beyond the brief exchange that passes between the host and the driver, and the palmed money that also changes hands: _don’t rush back_. There are trackers in Napoleon’s shoes, and a transmitter sewn into the lining of his jacket, but given the nature of the mission, neither may end up proving particularly useful beyond a second glass of Muscat. Waverly isn’t after blackmail this time, or as he prefers to call it _a subtle exertion of pressure_ , or at least not directly, but petty theft, at which Napoleon excels. Waverly could use leverage in the Mediterranean, and Alexander Harding — dilettante expatriate — shares not only a name with their immediate superior, but a penchant for quietly amassing influence. In the office off his bedroom, inaccessible from any other point in the house, Harding has also amassed paperwork regarding a probable deficit of funds which his investors would most likely find worrying, and that is what they are here to steal. “You needn’t look so excited about it,” Waverly had said, when he had given Napoleon a full dossier on Harding. “It’s hardly up to your usual standards. No Chagalls or anything of the sort.”

“My excitement is purely professional, sir,” Napoleon had said, and Illya had snorted. “I like a challenge,” Napoleon had gone on, “and I’m partial to Calvi in August.”

“I’d take a look at the dossier before I got too enthusiastic,” Waverly had said. “There are photos.”

Napoleon had looked at the dossier; Napoleon had shuffled through the photos, only once raising his eyebrows. Illya hadn’t been able to tell if he was impressed or surprised, and didn’t bother asking for an answer that would no doubt be at best half the truth. “More of a challenge than I thought,” Napoleon had allowed.

Waverly had looked at Illya. Illya had returned his look of desperation with one of equal resignation. “Let me see,” he had said, rather than pointing out, once again, that Waverly had chosen to employ Napoleon, and couldn’t even plead ignorance of his nature, and took the folder from Napoleon. “A challenge,” Illya said flatly.

“Peril,” Napoleon said, “you of all people should know that it isn’t worth doing things by halves.”

“Well,” Waverly had said, expression beginning to acquire the same resignation as Illya’s, “if we’re agreed, then, gentlemen — really, must you look so excited, Solo — and remember, it’s all about the papers. No point getting in over your heads. Really, you look far too excited. Kuryakin, I wish you the best of luck.”

Illya hadn’t bothered to thank Waverly, as the latter’s expression was approaching mania rather than the optimism he was so clearly trying to put on, and had allowed him to make his escape instead. He watches the second hand of his watch: five minutes gone and five to go, and the shadows are long enough now that he can slide into them, if he chooses. In his ear, Napoleon exclaims over the view, all the way down to the port, stilted praise that sounds as if it came straight from a guidebook. “It’s considerably improved by the company,” Harding says in his cut-glass accent, and Illya watches the shadows, and waits. “From the balcony, you can get a better look at the Citadel through the trees, just through here—” three minutes “—isn’t that gorgeous,” Harding says.

“It really is,” Napoleon says, and sounds wonderstruck. Two minutes to go, and Illya hears Harding set his glass down; one minute, and he hears Napoleon exclaim in surprise, and then the sigh of the evening breeze, a nothing sound, barely static, until Napoleon shifts, pulls away, says “What—“

“You’ve never done this?” Harding says.

“I’m not—” Napoleon says, “—I — no, have you, I mean — no,” and he must look as if he’s about to bolt, because Harding laughs.

“Quite all right,” he says, “but if you don’t mind, give me another chance,” and this time Illya isn’t listening, because the road is clear, and the shadows are dark enough, now, that he won’t be seen. He does hear Napoleon gasp, this time, at something that Harding does — perhaps he has Napoleon pressed back against the railing, or perhaps he’s just discovered that Napoleon likes to be held in place by the back of his neck — and Illya knows that sound, but not like this. He knows what Napoleon sounds like with Illya’s hand over his mouth. He doesn’t know what Napoleon sounds like shocked, though, caught off guard, and for all that he knows it’s just as much a lie as everything else about this, it knocks the breath out of him. Illya shifts his weight carefully, and finds a place to stand in the shadow of the house, and only then does he look up.

He can’t, for a moment, make out quite what he’s seeing against the flat dark sky, and then it registers: Napoleon, fingers pressed to his mouth, by the railing; Harding retrieving his wine from the table; the slow sway of Napoleon towards him, as if giving in to an irresistible force. “I hope I’ve made a convincing argument,” Harding says, and offers the glass to Napoleon.

“I think,” Napoleon says, shaky, “that I could be persuaded,” and takes it.

What Harding likes is not particularly men, but also not particularly women; in any case Napoleon tends to be the exception that proves the rule, assuming that the rule in question is regarding his apparently universal appeal. Harding likes boundaries, and establishing them — reading them in people, setting them up himself — in order to transgress; Harding likes people who don’t know what they’re agreeing to, and don’t have the context to guess at it either. He hands Napoleon the glass, and steps into his space, and says: “May I?”

“Yes,” Napoleon says, as if it’s the only thing he has ever wanted, and that’s what Harding likes; he likes the negative space between knowing and agreement. When Napoleon says yes, he understands the ramifications of it, counts cards and calculates his odds; when this person — pressed, now, against the railing — says yes, he says it because there is nothing else for him to do, now.

“Come on, then,” Harding says, and waits, and this time Napoleon is the one to lean in, to kiss Harding as if, having committed, he needs to demonstrate his resolve; he kisses Harding as if he doesn’t know what else to do. That isn’t Napoleon at all; Napoleon kisses as if he knows exactly what he’s doing, which is intentional on his part and a good part of the appeal. Illya can’t see Napoleon in this person’s particular desperation, or the way that Harding smiles as if he knows a secret that Napoleon doesn’t — not the case, but then, for now, Napoleon is busy not knowing — but there Napoleon is, in the way that he demonstrably wants, just for a moment; it’s that flash of face cards. He shows his hand, something universal to every part he plays, and Harding smiles a little wider. “Never at all,” he says.

“But I’d. I’d like to,” Napoleon says, and Harding laughs.

“I think I can tell,” he says, and rests a hand on the back of Napoleon’s neck. “Look at you — you’re just perfect, you are—” and there Napoleon is again, in the way that he leans into the contact and the praise, and the way that he goes still when Harding runs a proprietary hand down his back. “Here,” Harding says, “allow me,” and when he moves away, it is still Napoleon who follows, taking his cue, showing through just enough to sell the lie, periodic shadow of alder on the moonlight-grey vista of rock and dust.

Harding leaves the French doors open, and once again Illya loses sound for a moment to the sigh of the wind in the trees, and the flutter of the drapery, and he gives up on the transmitter and considers his options. There is little cover on the balcony, especially now that the moon has risen; there is no audio anywhere else. Illya decides to take his chances, and pulls himself over the railing, and does his best to become part of the wall, silhouette broken by the billow of the curtain. Inside, broken into planes and reflected in the glass paneling, Harding slides his hands down Napoleon’s sides, pushes his jacket off his shoulders and lets it fall in keeping with the look of the scene: pieces scattered across the floor, and Napoleon’s tie is the next to go, but not before Harding uses it to reel him in again and kisses him again, harder this time, an establishment of possession. Between the balcony and the bed, Harding peels away the artifice of a gentleman and leaves it crumpled on the floor, and by the time they get there he has Napoleon backed into a corner.

There’s something defensive to Napoleon’s movements by then, even the person he is playing aware enough to know that Harding is someone to be wary of, and Napoleon — it definitely is Napoleon, playing to his strengths, adding a certain art to the moment that requires self-knowledge — looks at Harding, eyes widening, and says, “I’ve never—”

“Pay very close attention,” Harding says, and goes to his knees, which Illya hadn’t expected. Napoleon doesn’t seem overmuch surprised, though he does a very convincing impression of it, jerks away in full-body trepidation when Harding strokes him, assessing. “Don’t look away,” Harding adds, and leans in.

It isn’t Harding that Illya watches, half-lit as the room is by lamplight, in the double-triple exposure of the reflection, but Napoleon, and maybe it’s the translucence of the image, the layers and layers of light and lies, but he isn’t quite sure who he’s looking at. Illya can’t tell if it’s Napoleon who forces the awkwardness from his posture, goes slowly lax and pushes into the grip that Harding has on his hips, or the same blank, the person who is not; Illya doesn’t know whether it’s Napoleon who gasps and doesn’t know if he’s allowed to touch Harding, and then Napoleon lets his head fall back and meets Illya’s gaze in the reflection and pins him with a look.

He isn’t putting on a show, as much as Napoleon is ever not putting on a show; he _is_ the show, simply by existing, by responding the way he does — lip bitten pink, the half-vocalizations of his breath, the way he can’t quite keep from rocking his hips forward — and Illya thinks that it was stupid of him to wonder in the first place, based on a false premise.

Harding pulls back and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, then turns Napoleon’s face back to him, knuckles pressed lightly to his cheekbone. “Fuck,” Napoleon says, and when he grabs for Harding’s shirt, his belt, Harding knocks his hands away, crowds him back until Napoleon is propped up on his elbows, barely breathing. It doesn’t look comfortable. It looks as if he’s frozen in place, straining to remain still and not give Harding the satisfaction of pinning him, and when Napoleon’s elbow slips, that’s calculated as well, a strategic forfeit. Harding takes his opportunity and, while he isn’t as broad in the shoulders as Napoleon, he has the tactical advantage of poise and practice, and Napoleon, at the moment, does not.

Napoleon is all long muscle and skin and nonspecific need, and Harding presses him into the sheets, and Napoleon shudders at that — whether it’s the weight of Harding or the crumple of his pristine white shirt, still buttoned, or the reminder of how profoundly out of his depth he is — and goes still. Illya has seen people go quiet like that, as if they’ve had their strings cut, their joints unstrung, when they think they have come to terms with an inevitability; it usually precedes the moment when they realize that they have not, after all, and begin to fight far too frantically and far too late. Harding knows it, too, judging by the surety, the odd assuredness in the way he slides his hands down Napoleon’s sides and the way he laughs when Napoleon jerks away from the tips of his fingers. Usually, Napoleon arches into even the lightest touch, telegraphs eagerness and easiness and invitation, but that isn’t who he is tonight. Instead, he forces himself to hold still, to let Harding slide two fingers along his lower lip and to take his cue.

Harding watches, because he is after all only human, the way that Napoleon mouths at his fingertips before he sucks, just the faintest flick of tongue before Harding curls his fingers into Napoleon’s cheek, and presses his thumb into the corner of Napoleon’s mouth, like setting a hook. Illya realizes that he must be pressing against the tips of his fingers through Napoleon’s skin, and Napoleon is still just — holding, waiting for whatever Harding will give him — barely breathing, just the slightest movement of his jaw to indicate how hard he’s trying to be good enough, still enough, to want this enough that Harding will give it to him. In the glass, it’s a tableau, a fulcrum point, and when Harding sighs, and says, “Aren’t you good,” and slides his thumb down to tip Napoleon’s chin up, Illya feels it like overbalancing, like giving in to gravity, like the tug of the line.

“Please,” Napoleon says, “I want this.”

It isn’t subtle, even by Napoleon’s usual standards, but then neither is Harding, particularly, and Napoleon can afford a little overtness now. There’s nothing left of the gentleman of leisure, now, but simply so much predator instinct couched in linen and lamplight. “That’s better,” Harding says, and this time, Napoleon doesn’t flinch away from the linear progression of Harding’s hand on his side, the arch of his back, diverging from the cut of his hip. He gasps as if he can’t stop himself, instead, and Harding laughs — low, amused, not remotely inclusive in his mirth — and does something that makes Napoleon grab at his arms, his shoulders, and turn his head away so that he’s looking at the glass, at Illya, at the long black line of the distant sea and the faint illuminated horizon. He looks lost, feeling his way and letting Harding lead him, and Illya watches for the moment when Napoleon sighs, a sound he usually only makes when pleased and well worn out. It’s a tell, and one that they’re both aware of; it’s a light in the window of the illusion: somebody’s in, all is well.

“God,” Napoleon breathes, and Harding laughs again, and slaps his hip, laughs harder at the way Napoleon can’t keep from going rigid at that, and slides his hand up Napoleon’s leg to his knee, the same impersonal possessiveness to the motion.

“If you want this,” Harding says, “you’ll have to do some work now, I think,” and Napoleon swallows and meets his gaze.

“Please,” Napoleon says, “anything, I’ll do anything,” as if he’s the one being manipulated, as if he’s being held underwater. He enjoys it, Illya realizes, or finally concludes; the evening has been rather indicative on that front. There’s a theatricality to any con that Napoleon likes — the lighting, the layout, the culmination in a breathless moment or two of odds, of waiting for it to set — but this, too, he enjoys, the part where he slips into another life, becomes someone entirely different for the exercise of it and the expertise with which he does so. For a little while, Napoleon gets to be a person, and right now, Napoleon is somebody who is allowing Harding to pull him up by the shoulders, and kiss him with one hand pulling his hair, a threat and an offer: Harding can do this to Napoleon, and Napoleon doesn’t know if he wants it or not; Napoleon wants so badly that he doesn’t even know how to tell the difference. (Napoleon, Illya knows, wants it; he wants Harding to settle in the big armchair in the corner and push Napoleon down by the shoulders, and what Napoleon wants, he gets.)

“Oh, go on, then,” Harding says, and doesn’t bother to untangle his hand from Napoleon’s hair. “Show me what you’ve learned.”

Napoleon stares up at him for a moment, and Illya nearly laughs, because it’s ridiculous — there’s just something so unimaginable about his hesitation, so absurd — but then he reaches out to undo Harding’s belt, presses his cheek to the fabric of Harding’s trousers, and there’s nothing funny about it anymore. Illya watches Napoleon mouth at the line of Harding’s cock, and the way that Harding indulges him before pulling his hair until Napoleon looks up at him again, and Illya wishes that he could see Napoleon’s face. “Get on with it,” Harding says.

Napoleon does, from what Illya can tell, with none of his usual obscene grace; he licks his lips and takes Harding down until he holds Napoleon there by his hair, until even Illya can hear the noises that Napoleon is making, choked and desperate. When Harding lets him breathe, Napoleon sounds as if he’s been gut-shot, in pain and helpless to do anything about it, but he lets Harding push him down again, and he digs his fingertips into Harding’s thighs. When Harding pulls him back, Napoleon fights it, and Illya thinks about how he must look — lips swollen and slippery-wet, flushed and gasping from lack of air — and thinks that Harding never had a chance. Napoleon might be on his knees, and he might have tears in his eyes from the effort of holding still and the sting of Harding’s hand in his hair and how badly he needs to breathe, but he has Harding under the palm of his hand, and now it’s simply a matter of how playful Napoleon feels.

Very, apparently; Napoleon tugs Harding forward by the hips and drags his lips up the side of his cock slow and messy and wet, and this time he doesn’t wait for Harding, but presses forward and holds there until Harding swears, and tugs at his hair, and finally yanks, a movement that crosses the line from suggestion to violence. “You’ll do,” Harding says, a little less authoritative than he might be given the way he stares at Napoleon’s mouth, and the loss of composure that most people suffer under Napoleon’s attentions, on which he prides himself. “Turn around.”

Napoleon does, and Harding tugs him back, one hand on his hip and the other — Illya can infer that from the way that Napoleon bites his lip, and the way he sways back towards Harding — lost to the vagaries of the reflection. He was right, anyway: Napoleon looks absolutely debauched, hair a mess of finger-tangled waves and mouth so red that he might have bitten it bloody, if not for the way that Napoleon traces the swell of it with his tongue, eyes half-closed and shining in the low light. The reflection loves him, the study of contrasts between the planes of him, the shadow under his jaw and the golden lamplit highlights, and Harding pulls until Napoleon tucks a leg up on the seat of the chair and lets Harding tug him back and down.

“There’s — wait,” Napoleon says, “I can’t—”

Harding idly scrapes his nails up Napoleon’s side, the delicate skin between ribs. “Can’t?” he says, and doesn’t let go.

“I,” Napoleon says. “Please,” he says, and even Illya can’t tell if he — or: not Napoleon, but the person starting to shake from the effort of staying upright — means _please, help me_ or _please, don’t,_ but Harding considers them more or less equivalent anyway, and hums, pleased, and more than a little indulgent (for himself) and condescending (for Napoleon).

“Of course,” Harding says, and Napoleon gasps, but he doesn’t pull away; he lets Harding pull him back until they’re skin-to-skin, or rather skin to suit, and it’s — a picture, though Illya doesn’t have any particular eye for such things, but he knows one when he sees it — perfect, anyway, staged beautifully. Napoleon, in Harding’s lap, endless lines of tension in the lamplight, and Harding, holding Napoleon with one hand splayed possessively over his chest, and the other on the arm of the chair, idle: Napoleon has Harding exactly where he wants him, and he’s moving even before Harding rocks up into him, overly needy and too overwhelmed to be quiet about it, and his eyes closed — lost in his performance — all the while.

Illya glances away for a moment and checks his watch, though they aren’t in any particular rush. Between the lamplight and the shadows, it’s too easy for him to lose track of time, though the driver was instructed to wait for his cue and bribed beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s in Illya’s nature, though, to be sure of such things, just as it’s in Napoleon’s, when Illya looks back up, to meet his eyes squarely though the reflection must be unclear from inside, and half-lost in shadow anyway, and the sound that Napoleon makes then — entirely pleasure and want — is all for him. “There you are,” Harding says, and Napoleon looks away and settles seamlessly back into character. “Isn’t that better?”

“Yes,” Napoleon says, almost a sob.

“Yes, what,” Harding says, and pulls him off-balance, so that Napoleon is pressed back against Harding’s chest, unable to move beyond the smallest shift of his weight, and the way that he twists to grab at Harding’s arm.

Napoleon lets his head fall back against Harding’s shoulder, and gasps: “Yes — thank you—”

It’s loud enough for Illya to catch the consonants, at least, and fill in the rest; it’s meant to be, and Harding rewards Napoleon by letting him move again, and pulling him back on every thrust, as if Napoleon is simply to be used, to be made the most of and then discarded. Illya watches the way that Napoleon almost overbalances when Harding surrenders his grip on the chair’s arm to scratch over Napoleon’s stomach, and the way that, when Harding gets a hand on his cock, Napoleon goes still again, in something like trepidation.

“Come on, then,” Harding says, and moves his other hand to Napoleon’s throat, and digs his thumb in so that Napoleon goes quiet. “Come on.” Napoleon gasps for air, jaw working, and fails in making any sort of noise beyond a creaky sigh, and Harding smiles, more a snarl than anything. “Come on,” he says again, and squeezes one last time before he lets go of Napoleon’s throat, the marks of his fingertips showing up white for a second before Napoleon takes in a great heaving breath and shudders, coming over Harding’s hand. Illya watches the rise and fall of his chest, and the way that Harding moves Napoleon’s body, thrusts up into him and presses his face into Napoleon’s shoulder and finally goes still.

Harding is not particularly interested in doing anything for Napoleon beyond calling a car and offering the use of his bathroom, which Napoleon accepts, and absenting himself almost immediately using the excuse of a cigarette, which gives Illya approximately thirty seconds to vacate the balcony and meet the car. Napoleon uses the intervening time — and Harding’s deliberately turned back, and casually callous silence — to run the water, and pick the lock on Harding’s office, and while it isn’t exactly clear how he manages, to select the one important filing folder from the false bottom of a desk drawer and remove it from the premises. Illya, listening to the muffled transmission, doesn’t bother to pay attention to the way Harding dismisses Napoleon, smugly at best. Instead, he meets the car at the corner a few houses down, and folds himself into far too little backseat.

“As promised,” Napoleon says, folded back into himself again, not a loose threat in sight, and hands Illya the folder. “Don’t say I never get you anything.”

“What a hardship,” Illya says drily, and holds a hand up, waits for Napoleon to lean into it, presenting himself for inspection. “Are you alright?”

“I could do with something to cleanse my palate,” Napoleon says — layers, again, inviting Illya to peel them back — “but I think that can wait until the hotel.”

Illya doesn’t want to wait until the hotel, not when Napoleon is looking at him like that. Illya prefers action to anticipation. He looks at Napoleon in the brightening light of the port, still awake even now, and presses the edge of the folder into the heel of his hand, and holds himself in check anyway.

In the hotel, the lamplight is the same, but Napoleon locks the folder into his case and sips mediocre young whiskey from the sideboard and, still not quite settled back into his own skin, sets the glass down and pushes Illya back onto the bed. “You know,” Napoleon says, “it’s not that I don’t enjoy this sort of thing—” Illya snorts “—thank you for that,” he says, deadpan, and there he is again, in the negative space of his bone-dry humor. “I was going to say that there’s a certain pleasure in actually enjoying the company you’re with,” Napoleon says, “but I suppose that’s too obvious for you.”

“Obvious,” Illya scoffs, and Napoleon settles his hands on Illya’s shoulders.

“Obvious,” Napoleon repeats, and settles his weight on Illya’s hips, rocks against him even as Napoleon undoes the buttons of his shirt, and lets it drift to the floor. “Are you going to help, or just watch?”

“Watching is fine,” Illya says, but he reaches out anyway, and undoes Napoleon’s belt, peels his own shirt over his head and gets his trousers off when Napoleon moves away. “Do you really need help?”

“It never hurts,” Napoleon says, and turns back, settles back onto the bed, takes Illya’s wrist in his hand and moves it to his hip. “I didn’t have as much time as we thought, back there, between the driver and the cigarette. An efficient man, Mr. Harding is.” He holds up a finger. “Not that I’d call that a positive quality, you understand, but, well—” Napoleon arches into Illya’s hand, pushes against his palm. “I’m not precisely opposed.”

Illya understands, then, when he presses with his fingertips: Napoleon is still wet, and when Illya traces down Napoleon’s thigh, he can feel the traces of it still. Illya isn’t sure what Napoleon sees when he looks at Illya, what expression must be on his face, but he knows that it’s Napoleon who half-smiles, satisfied, and strokes Illya’s cock with a slick hand. “You don’t seem to be either,” he says, and pushes Illya back onto the pillows, and sinks onto him so smoothly that Illya almost catches his breath. “It’s much better,” Napoleon says, “with someone you actually like,” and takes his time before he moves.

Illya rests his hands on Napoleon’s hips, and doesn’t try to do anything but hold on, give him a sense of solid ground and an axis on which to balance, and lets Napoleon set the pace. He’s slow about it, and lazy, and when he leans forward to press his face into Illya’s neck, Illya rocks up a little. “Please,” Napoleon says, “be my guest,” and there he is again, the faint scrape of his teeth against Illya’s collarbone and the way he shifts to let Illya find some leverage, accommodating Illya as if it’s second nature to him. When Illya starts to move, Napoleon kisses him, smiles against Illya’s mouth and gasps at the shove of his hips. “Thank you,” Napoleon says.

“Please,” Illya says, amused. “What hardship.”

“If you’re being sarcastic,” Napoleon says, “then I’m doing something wrong.”

“Shut up,” Illya says, “and let me,” and takes that as permission to press forward, and tug Napoleon down to meet him, and move in earnest until Napoleon gasps, one hand on Illya’s shoulder and the other between them, wrung-out and half-there, and comes, slumping to press his forehead to Illya’s shoulder.

“Come on,” Napoleon says. “I can already tell I’ll be feeling it in the morning. At least make it worthwhile.”

“Worthwhile?” Illya says. “Low standards.”

“Prove me wrong,” Napoleon says, gone lax and heavy against his chest, and Illya does.

Afterwards, Napoleon gets up, moving a little less fluidly than usual, and crosses the room, pauses in the door of the en suite. Illya looks at the triple outline of him — silhouette, shadow, mirror — and waits.

“Thank you,” Napoleon says. “It really is better. With someone I — well, you know,” he says, and catches himself. “Obvious — I suppose.”

Illya looks at him, in the lamplight, and realizes: this is Napoleon letting him see a seam, a space between moving parts; this is Napoleon, delineated by lamplight, showing him where it shines through, substance rather than space.

“You too,” Illya says, taking that momentary glimpse as the privilege that it is, and thinks that any amount of waiting — of shadows, and silhouettes, and silvered reflection — is worth that moment of light. Napoleon smiles, and closes the door behind him.

Illya waits, and doesn’t doubt that he’ll be back.

 


End file.
